Don’t miss Dan Hannan in Australia – Perth, Melbourne, Sydney

He’s in Perth Tuesday night. I’ve seen him speak before and he was excellent. I’ll be there. Tickets to Perth here.

“British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Dan Hannan explains why London will soon be closer to Perth than Brussels, and outlines historic opportunities ahead for West Australian entrepreneurs.” With introduction by Andrew Hastie MP.

Dan Hannan In Australia: Melbourneon Wednesday 31 October in conversation with John Roskam and Nick Cater.

Here in England Daniel Hannan is a true – albeit unsung – hero. He was the backroom driving force that over 20 years turned the Tory party Eurosceptic from its pro-EU stance under John Major. He memorably excoriated the Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the European Parliament in 2009:

And he wrote the magnificent book “How We [US title: How The Brits] Invented Freedom And Why It Matters” about the notion of political freedom under the law being an Anglosphere thing, *not* a French-revolutionary thing. Burke understood this, but Hannan traces it back many centuries earlier – and forward.

That discussion was initiated to try to help taxpayers see how their Money has proven to be too big a lure for those in power and that government accountability is at the core of our troubles.

Freedom was hard won and must not be allowed to slip away for the sake of trying.

As we have seen from America and Britain through the events of Trumpit and Brexit: The Peasants have shown an understanding of the inherent right to freedom and intend pushing back and we will not be enslaved by the Great CO2 induced Electricity Manipulation.

There is No Core Mechanism in the so called, Climate Models, and without that core, there is No Model.

Many have Enriched themselves at our expense, just follow the cross subsidies fouling up our Electricity industry.

Even slightly further off topic: last night (and i cannot believe that I did this) I watched on BBC4(TV) for 3 hrs(!)
the Ghan train journey from Adelaide to Darwin. Very little commentary but in passing the Burunga wind farm
there was a caption (this being the BBC) that windpower supplied 34% of SA’s annual energy requirements.
Taken together with Paul’s observations above that comment suggests that the intermittency problem is not just a
story dreamed up by incorrigible sceptics.
BTW I hope that I will not offend if I say, having survived this journey in proxy, that there seem to be more
impressive hills here in Cheshire than in Central Australia. I did learn some respect for the native Australians
(and the European pioneers) who not only survived but thrived in what seems such a barren and hostile environment.
But where were the vineyards?

8 Oct: BBC: Brazil election: Far-right Jair Bolsonaro wins first round
With almost all the votes counted, Mr Bolsonaro had 47% and Mr Haddad 28%.
Opinion polls conducted before the election predicted that in a second round the two candidates would be TIED…

BBC about an hour ago:

28 Oct: BBC: Jair Bolsonaro: Far-right candidate wins Brazil poll
With nearly 95% of the vote counted, Mr Bolsonaro has 56% of the votes against 44% for Fernando Haddad from the left-wing Workers Party.
Mr Bolsonaro campaigned on a promise to eradicate corruption and to drive down Brazil’s high crime levels…
The result represents a marked right-wing swing in the country which was under military rule from 1964 to 1985.
Pointing to the number of former members of the military he surrounds himself with, his opponents argue that Mr Bolsonaro poses a risk to Brazil’s democracy…
Mr Bolsonaro also alienated many Brazilians with his homophobic, racist and misogynistic remarks.
But many of his supporters view him as a “saviour”…
Some of those who cast their vote for Mr Bolsonaro on Sunday also said that they did so because they did not want to see the left-wing Workers’ Party return to power.

same url, now updated, slightly lower percentage for Bolsonaro:

6min ago: BBC: Jair Bolsonaro: Far-right candidate wins Brazil poll
With almost all of the votes counted, Mr Bolsonaro has 55% of the votes against 45% for Fernando Haddad from the left-wing Workers Party…
Some of his voters celebrated in the street outside Mr Bolsonaro’s home in Rio de Janeiro, waving Brazilian flags and letting of fireworks…

He has suggested that Brazil could pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, arguing that its requirements compromise Brazil’s sovereignty over the Amazon region…

The Workers’ Party candidate, Fernando Haddad, had tried to distance himself from the corruption scandals which had rocked his party but for many voters that was not enough…
Mr Bolsonaro will be sworn in on 1 January 2019 and replace outgoing President Michel Temer, who is leaving office with a record low approval rating of 2%.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46013408

again with ‘far right’… Given that anyone to the right of Mao is ‘far right’, it has lost all meaning (for sane people), and will just work to shelter the genuinely far-right loonies who are just as unpalatable, and moronic as those who should be labelled “far left”.

28 Oct: Fox News: Trump mocks ‘crazed & stumbling lunatic’ Tom Steyer, after billionaire rips president’s rhetoric
by Gregg Re
President Trump derided rival billionaire Tom Steyer as a “wacky” and “crazed & stumbling lunatic” on Sunday, after Steyer — who was one of the prominent liberals to receive a threatening suspicious package last week — said he “absolutely was blaming” Trump for creating an atmosphere in which “anything can bubble up, and anything is bubbling up.”…

28 Oct: UK Times: Too much wind shocks electric bill payers
by Mark Macaskill
A record £4.8m was paid to wind farm operators in the space of one day, for switching off turbines when it became too windy.
More than 60 farms — most in Scotland — were compensated after electricity supply outstripped demand on October 8. The bonanza far exceeded the previous reported record of £3.1m, sparking fresh criticism of the Scottish government’s headlong rush towards green energy.

In exceptionally windy conditions, the National Grid cannot cope with the extra energy turbines produce, so firms receive “constraint payments” to shut down. Although most wind power comes from Scotland, households across Britain are funding the payments through their electricity bills.”

“The high costs of wind farm constraints result from the Scottish government’s unbalanced enthusiasm for wind power,” said John Constable, director of London’s Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), a charity that is critical of subsidies for wind power.
“In a striking example of democratic deficit, these costs are paid for predominantly by English and Welsh consumers, who have no votes in Holyrood.
As history shows, “taxation without representation” is politically unstable. This simply has to stop.”

The handouts have been blamed on the late handover of a £1bn sub-sea cable to transfer surplus energy south of the border. The Western Link cable, running from Ayrshire to Wirral, only started to work at full capacity in September, nearly three years late.
Jenny Hogan, deputy chief executive of Scottish Renewables, said: “Constraint payments are a normal part of the overall efficient management of our electricity system, given the limitations of the UK’s ageing energy infrastructure.”

29 Oct: ABC: Brazil election: Jair Bolsonaro wins presidential race against rival Fernando Haddad
Reuters/AP ***with ABC?
***In an interview with RN Breakfast, Brazilian freelance journalist Cleuci De Oliveira described him as a “fringe figure” in politics, a former military paratrooper who, “embodies a nostalgia for the years of the dictatorship”…

1h ago: Bolsonaro supporters celebrating his victory on Brasília’s Monumental Axis right now have announced a rally at the University of Brasilia tomorrow, at 5pm, per reporter Helena Mader
“Universities are no place for Communists,” they’re shouting from atop a float car…

2h ago: Cleuci de Oliveira: An addendum to Andrew’s point: the electoral authorities invalidating Bolsonaro’s victory would comprise an undemocratic travesty
re Tweet: Andrew Fishman, reporter, The Intercept; managing editor, The Intercept Brazil:
It’s important to remember that Bolsonaro is worse than Trump, but his vice president is far worse than he is. As perverse as it may seem, unless the electoral authorities invalidate his campaign (unlikely), we should all be praying for his health for the next 4 years.https://twitter.com/cleucl?lang=en

AUDIO: 7min23sec: 25 Oct: ABC: Brazil polarised by election: Deborah Farias
On PM with Linda Mottram
For her insights into the election in Brazil, PM spoke with Brazilian born university lecturer Deborah Farias.
TRANSCRIPT:
LINDA MOTTRAM: So riven is Brazil that people are joking about scratching family members from Christmas lists over their political differences, says Dr Deborah Farias.
She’s a Brazilian-born economist. She lectures at the University of New South Wales and she joined me in the studio earlier…

LINDA MOTTRAM: And I guess we should mention the use of social media because Facebook is, I think, the second-largest uptake of Facebook in Brazil in the world and the use of WhatsApp. That looks like it might breach some electoral rules. How powerful has it been, though?…

DEBORAH FARIAS: It’s been very, very powerful. In a way it is a new sort of universe. It’s not that we didn’t have social media four years ago, but it is just that it has been increased.
And there’s an important element to it: in August of this year Bolsonaro’s oldest son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is also a federal congressman: he met with Steve Bannon.
LINDA MOTTRAM: They’ve obviously picked up on the skills of someone like Bannon?
DEBORAH FARIAS: Yes. Exactly, exactly.

Women’s votes might be the key to stopping Brazil’s far-right …
Washington Post-18 Sep. 2018
While many things can happen, one thing comes close to certain: Women are poised to be the election’s key voters. Deborah B.L. Farias is a…

Deborah suggests some fascism:

4 Oct: Ausn Institute of Internat’l Affairs: Brazil’s Divisive Election
By Dr Deborah Farias
While all presidential elections can be called unique, this one certainly deserves the label. Three key reasons stand out, all of them directly related to Bolsonaro: the presence of a candidate from the far-right, the importance of social values issues and the gender divide in electoral preferences…
While a leftist radical discourse has been present since the country’s re-democratisation in the mid-1980s, the far-right was not an expressive movement until now…

The general pattern has been a leftist versus a centrist candidate. This time, Bolsonaro proposes a far-right, ***fascist-leaning platform. His record and overall positions are a mash-up of US President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte…READ ALL

another objective voice given space on theirABC – Sarah Maslin from the globalist The Economist:

ABC’s Andrew West’s first question to Maslin: is there a disguised military coup in the process right now in Brazil?

Maslin: Wow. what a question. I mean I think most people think the risk of a military coup is pretty low. Brazilian institutions are strong etc… that said we are going to see a more militarised cabinet etc…we can expect a more conservative, authoritarian govt, altho most people think the risk of a coup is pretty low.

Maslin: overnight there was a story about the Bolsonaro campaign or maybe supporters sending out masses of WhattsApp messages with denigrating allegations against Bolsonaro’s opponent. possible campaign finance violation. all the usual allegations against Bolsonaro, a reactionary when it comes to social issues.

AUDIO: 14min56sec: 10 Oct: Columbia Journalism Review: Podcast: Brazil’s upcoming elections and the echoes of Trump in 2016
ON THIS WEEK’S EPISODE, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Sarah Maslin, the Brazil correspondent for The Economist, about the country’s upcoming October 28 run-off election. Lead candidate Jair Bolsonaro of the conservative Social Liberal party is running a campaign that challenges reporters there much as Trump’s 2016 run did the US press.
By Zainab Sultan and Amanda Darrach
Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
Zainab Sultan and Amanda Darrach are CJR Delacorte Fellows.https://www.cjr.org/podcast/brazil-election-bolsonaro.php

some perspective, especially given Australian media’s constant outrage over gun violence in the US.

10 Aug: Reuters: Brazil suffers record murder tally in 2017, ahead of election
by Gabriel Stargardter
Brazil had a record number of murders last year, with homicides rising 3.7 percent from 2016 to 63,880 according to a study released on Thursday, just months before a presidential election in which violence has become a key issue.

In 2017, Brazil had a murder rate of 30.8 per 100,000 people, up from 29.9 in 2016, according to data published by the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook 2018. Drug-scarred Mexico, which also suffered a record number of murders in 2017, had a homicide rate of around 20 per 100,000 people…

Statista: Total number of murders in the United States in 2017, by state
There were a total of 17,284 reported murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases in the U.S. in 2017. Although the number of cases has declined in the past twenty years, when viewed in international comparison, the U.S. murder rate is still high. In 2012, Germany’s murder rate stood at 0.8, compared to ***4.7 in the United States.https://www.statista.com/statistics/195331/number-of-murders-in-the-us-by-state/

and there have been worse years in Jamaica. the military are on the streets in various parts of the country.

24 Sept: TravelWeekly: New state of emergency declared in Jamaica
A fresh state of emergency was declared in Jamaica yesterday as two others were extended.
Three parts of the capital of Kingston are now under a state of emergency, according to the latest Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice…
Meanwhile, a state of emergency in the parish of St James, which includes the tourism area of Montego Bay, has been extended until October 31…
An additional state of emergency in St Catherine North State – focused on Spanish Town, Linstead and Bog Walk – has also been extended until October 2…http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/312249/new-state-of-emergency-declared-in-jamaica

having lived for some years in Jamaica, I can vouch for the fact the homicide rate is multi-faceted, and economics plays a part, but most poor people in Jamaica do not murder people and they are very vocal about the fact you can’t just blame poverty.

being a drugs trans-shipment country plays a big part though, in recent years, a lot of the killings involve people in the Jamaican phone scams.

I asked someone to go to Mexico. He said he would not. He said it was the most dangerous place in the world.
Really? So I looked it up. He was right. Apart from war zones like Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen/Ukraine/Congo/, he was right.
many of the most dangerous places in the world are in Central America. That is not mentioned. For Americans it is a given.
For non Americans, it is amazing.

To be fair. If I lived in Guatemala, I would walk my family to the US. I would not stop in Mexico either.
Refugee? No. Desperate, yes. However America cannot solve the world’s problems. Governments have to solve their own
problems.

Then one of the most prosperous countries in the world is shutting down all manufacturing. Australia.
You have to ask why politicians in South Australia and Tasmania are importing diesel to power our society
when we have hundreds of years of coal and gas? You have to ask why foreign controlled energy companies are shutting
coal power stations to make us dependent on windmills when were the envy of the world for cheap, plentiful power?

If you said our politicians were crooks, that is the only label which fits.

A United Nations climate report says that even if every country abides by the grand promises they made in Paris last year to reduce greenhouse gases, the planet would still be “doomed.”

President Obama signed America to the Paris accords in 2016 declaring that it was “the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.” And when President Trump pulled out of the deal earlier this year, he was criticized by environmentalists for killing it.

But as it turns out, the Paris accord was was in-fact a scam that will do nothing to “save the planet.”

At all.

According to the latest annual United Nations report on the “emissions gap,” the Paris agreement will provide only a third of the cuts in greenhouse gas that environmentalists claim is needed to prevent catastrophic warming.

If every country involved in those accords abides by their promises between now and 2030 temperatures will still rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

To put that into perspective, the goal of the Paris agreement was to keep the global temperature increase to under 2 degrees.

The head of the U.N. Environment Program Eric Solheim, which produces the annual report, said this week that “One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future. Governments, the private sector and, civil society must bridge this catastrophic climate gap.”

The report says unless global greenhouse gas emissions peak before 2020, the CO2 levels will be way above the goal set for 2030, which, it goes on, will make it “extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2 degrees C can still be reached.”

The United Nations claims that closing this gap will be easy enough, if nations set their collective minds to it.

But this is simply not true. Pure fantasy.

The list of what would need to be done by the year 2020 includes: Boosting renewable energy’s share to 30%. Pushing electric cars to 15% of new car sales, up from less than 1% today. Doubling mass transit use. Cutting air travel CO2 emissions by 20%. And coming up with $1 trillion for “climate action. Also, coal-fired power plants would have to be phased out worldwide, starting right now.

According to the report, “phasing out coal consumption … is an indispensable condition for achieving international climate change targets.” This means putting a stop to any new coal plants and starting to phase out the ones currently in use worldwide.”

The problem with wind generated electricity is clearly demonstrated in South Australia.
Nameplate wind capacity 1900 MW.Average wind generation during October 600 MW.
Maximum wind generation 1200 MW.
Minimum wind generation under 100 MW.
SA grid demand minimum 700-800 MW in middle of day when roof top solar is delivering.
If the wind is blowing strongly, they need to run gas generators to maintain a stable grid and export surplus to Victoria. If it wasn’t for big brother Victoria and that big 600 MW interconnector, the system would be unworkable.
SA peak demand 1400-1500 MW in the evenings.
So SA needs to be able to supply 1500 MW from dispatchable gas/diesel and Victorian imports when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Therefore the investment in over 600 wind towers, at a capital cost of over $3 billion is essentially redundant. The only saving when the wind is blowing is the variable fuel cost.
Furthermore, 50% wind generation in a market is impractical. If Victoria follows SA down this path, there will be chaos. But the rent seeking investors don’t care, and governments are too inept to understand the consequences.

“the investment in over 600 wind towers, at a capital cost of over $3 billion is essentially redundant.”

The Government of South Australia invested nothing in wind towers. Nothing in the budget.
The Federal Government invested nothing.
The windmills are own by private companies and bought with our money.

This was funded by money stolen from every electricity bill Nationally and given to power companies.

Power prices have never been higher. Power never more unreliable or inadequate. Power company profits never higher. The gain to the people whose money was stolen is not investment. We have been robbed and we are poorer. Repeal the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000. (the RET)

Coal and gas, like the wind, are free. The only cost is harvesting. Long term that is lower for coal.

A single power station is worth thousands of windmills and hundreds of square kilometers of solar panels and last far longer. That is why they are blown up and shut down.

Rather than assessing the economics of extra hardware (for those that can afford it and/or have space to install it), people should be asking the question “What put us in a position where we have to spend a significant amount of our own money to achieve the same, or lesser results as we had for decades?”.

No amount of commonsense words from Dan can save these fine examples of Australia’s education system …

0.00sec: “We are going to go on strike from school, we wanna get the, um, our like carbon (sic) footprint down to 1.5 (?) …”

​We are striking from school to tell our politicians to take our futures
seriously and treat climate change for what it is – a crisis.
They can show us that they care by taking urgent action to move Australia
beyond fossil fuel projects (e.g. #StopAdani’s mega coal mine)
and get the job done of moving us to 100% renewable energy for all.

0.10sec: “I don’t wanna live in a place, where, you know, we’re in that sort of danger. I don’t like where we are heading and I think it needs to change.”

“But some people think the world is going to end by … the world’s gonna heat up and we’ll gonna be baked alive, but, other people think a monster with seven (7) heads is gonna come out & rip us apart.
I’m still deciding.”

School students go on strike in France, indeed, a school just up the road from me was blockaded by students for 2 days as a result of the forced deportation of a girl somewhere in Paris, or its suburbs- who was literally dragged from her classroom, if I recall correctly. There have been other protests too – some of them less… valid or relevant to school students than others, in my opinion.

Of course a lot of students look at it as a nice way to avoid school, but in this case, when interviewed, various students, and student union representatives came across as knowing why they were protesting, and sounded more coherent, and confident than average (No way on earth this would have been me at their age). Obviously the way it is reported (show, or don’t show the students with no clue) is not going to give the whole picture….

In general, I have nothing against (peaceful/non destructive) protests by school students about topics relevant to them, but when it’s related to something like “climate change”, anti-Trump protests, or the recent anti-gun demonstrations in the US where there is obviously big money at play, and students are likely to be pawns in a bigger game… then…it’s a problem. To paraphrase, I might not agree with them, but I will defend their right to protest.

“People who live in a liberal bubble do not have an understanding of this country,” she said. “I don’t think they spend enough time in America. If you live in New York City, you can’t say you live in America. Sorry, I know people will be offended by that.”

But in her bubble, “we read the New Yorker and we watch MSNBC and we think the whole world should think like we do, and they don’t.”

and

“if you think global warming is the most important issue affecting this country — and I do — then you haven’t been to a community (where people) cannot feed their families.”

It is notable that she believes in “Global Warming” which she presumes is synonymous with “man made Global Warming”. One we can do nothing about. I believe Alexandra has no idea of the difference or that it matters.

29 Oct: Mining Monthly: Coal-fired generational mining windfall
DATA from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has proved yet again that mining is the lifeblood of the Australian economy.
The mining industry added 8.8% to the value of the Australian economy in the past year.
Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane said the growth had come mostly from coal and gas.

In 1994-95 Australian coal production was worth $8.8 billion. In June this year it was $65.6 billion…

Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan said the coal figure showed the industry’s strength.
“Despite Labor talking down coal jobs and saying coal is in ‘structural decline’ these figures show this is flat out wrong,” Canavan said.

29 Oct: UK Express: Euro plunges as Merkel QUITS as party leader of CDU and Europe stands on a knife edge
THE euro fell to session lows today as the news broke German Chancellor Angela Merkel would not be continuing her position as the leader of her party after 18 years.
By Charlie Buckle
The Euro fell to 0.88p against the Pound today as the news broke the German leader would not be standing as Chairwoman of the CDU…
The German Chancellor told leaders of her Christian Democrats (CDU) that she will not seek re-election as party chairwoman at a conference in early December, a senior party source said…

The German Chancellor told leaders of her Christian Democrats (CDU) that she will not seek re-election as party chairwoman at a conference in early December, a senior party source said.
The news follows a catastrophic election in the German state of Hesse where the CDU suffered losses.
Despite Merkel’s party remaining the largest in Hesse, Klaus-Peter Willsch, the CDU’s representative in the state, said the result was a demonstration of how no one was satisfied with the current federal government.
“This is a true hint that it is not a state policy but a federal policy problem we are facing – everyone could see our government is not performing,” he told CNBC…

29 Oct: CNBC: Germany’s Merkel is reportedly set to step down as party leader after dismal regional election
by Holly Ellyatt
Other experts are still skeptical that Merkel could see out a full fourth term. “If she manages to stay on as chancellor after the CDU elects a new leader, probably on December 7, she would still be seen as a lame duck,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, said in a note Monday.
“By relinquishing her role at the helm of the CDU voluntarily, she may try to head off a challenge from a potential successor which, if successful, could also have toppled her as chancellor.

A regional election in the German state of Hesse delivered another political blow to Merkel on Sunday, with more voters fleeing to the left and right of the party…
In the meantime, the left-wing Greens and right-wing, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) saw their share of the vote increase dramatically…
Meanwhile, the Greens gains 19.7 percent of the vote (up from 11.1 percent) and the AfD was seen with 13.2 percent of the vote, tripling its vote share from 2013 and allowing it to enter parliament for the first time…

For Hesse, the result means the incumbent CDU-Greens coalition has lost its majority and could rely on the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) to form a grand coalition…
“First, the AfD is now represented in all 16 regional state parliaments and the Bundestag. (Sunday’s) result is therefore the final piece of evidence that the AfD has established itself within the German party system. Talk of a populist ‘wave’ does not nearly reflect the level of realignment that is currently underway in German politics.”https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/29/hesse-election-result-bad-for-merkel-cdu-and-the-spd.html

This “infrasound” curse has a wider influence than safety regulators and employers care to have known.

They have damaged the health of countless workers in industries where vibration occurs.
Just think, train drivers, heavy machinery operators.
Even NASA acknowledged that one of the biggest issues for interplanetary space travel was going to be vibration. I wrongly imagined that there would be no vibration in space.

Never assume that either side of “big money politics” is concerned about the health of the ordinary taxpayer.

ANU: Dr Sean Burges
PhD (Warwick) in Politics and International Studies; MA (Western Ontario) in Political Science
Lecturer in International Relations

ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
TWEET: Eric Holthaus, Meteorologist, staff writer, Grist
This is worth repeating over and over:
The most horrific thing Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has planned is privatization of the Amazon rainforest. With just 12yr remaining to remake the global economy and prevent catastrophic climate change, this is planetary suicide.
28 Oct 2018

from REPLIES:
Lindsay BeyerSCREAM, Award-winning documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist. Host of The Breach podcast by Rewire
If he wants to privatize the Amazon, can the rest of the world pony up enough to buy the Amazon and make it into a huge park?https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/1056739486481170432

29 Oct: AFR: Scott Morrison’s energy policy explained: The good, the bad and the ugly
by Ben Potter
Carbon emissions are the missing leg of the three-legged stool that EnergyAustralia chief executive Catherine Tanna told The Australian Financial Review’s National Energy Summit would all be essential for companies to invest in the generation that is needed for prices to fall and supply to be reliable…

The energy market bodies that work under the ESB are working on a series of initiatives apart from the reliability obligation – day-ahead markets, strategic reserves, a tariff for wholesale “demand response”, and an Integrated System Plan for transmission and distribution.
These are all aimed at shoring up the grid as the mix shifts to cleaner energy. But there is tension over how many new mechanisms they can impose upon the “energy only” National Electricity Market without impairing its efficiency as a market by deterring companies from undertaking stand-alone investments…

Building more coal capacity would also make it almost impossible for the government to achieve the 26-28 per cent target it agreed at the Paris climate talks. Morrison and Taylor say Australia will meet its Paris obligations “in a canter”.
This looks true for the electricity sector, which is decarbonising thanks to the boom in wind and solar energy, if it is only required to deliver pro rata emissions cuts…

CSIRO reported to the government last year that the electricity sector would have to cut its emissions by 52-70 per cent for the economy as a whole to hit the Paris target, because of the difficulty of cutting emissions in agriculture, transport and heavy industry.https://www.afr.com/news/scott-morrisons-energy-policy-explained-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-20181029-h17801
29 Oct: Australian Times: Shorten proposes investment bank to help Pacific nations’ development
by Michelle Grattan
(This article is republished from The Conversation)
In a speech to the Lowy Institute on Monday – part of which has been released beforehand – Shorten says Australia’s Pacific neighbours want partners for infrastructure projects – “and as prime minister, I intend to make sure they look to Australia first…

In his speech Shorten, stressing the diversity of nations in the Pacific, says a Labor government would engage with these countries “through partnership, not paternalism”.
“We will listen, knowing that for our Pacific neighbours, sustainable development and poverty reduction are more than economic concerns”…

The opposition leader also argues that Labor is better able than the Coalition to chime in with the Pacific countries’ concerns about climate change.
“No community of nations are more concerned about climate change – with better reason – than our Pacific neighbours. Rising sea levels are an existential threat for these nations, ” he says.
“Under a Labor government, Australia will be much better placed to help our neighbours respond and to press their case internationally because we accept the science of climate change – and we accept the need for real action.”
Morrison repeatedly has given as one reason for resisting the push from the right for Australia to exit the Paris climate agreement that the climate issue is of major concern to Pacific countries which are in turn strategically important to Australia…https://www.australiantimes.co.uk/shorten-proposes-investment-bank-to-help-pacific-nations-development/

27 Oct: UK Telegraph: Energy companies fail to pass on customer payments of £100m to renewable energy projects
By Jillian Ambrose
Struggling energy companies have failed to pass on renewable energy subsidies, paid for by their customers, and have only days to go until their stay of execution ends.
By this Wednesday, more than 30 of the market’s smallest suppliers must fork out £100m they owe to renewable energy generators after a month-long reprieve from the regulator.

If energy companies cannot pay their share, Ofgem may consider calling on rival suppliers to split the cost of filling the funding gap.
The gaping hole in the regulator’s funding pot has raised hackles among industry bosses who fear that the cost of bailing out their cut-price rivals could hit the pockets of their own customers.

29 Oct: ABC: Power prices and carbon emissions are both rising, but could lower emissions cut your bills?
By business editor Ian Verrender
In the aftermath of last week’s disastrous Wentworth by-election, which recorded one of the biggest swings in a byelection in modern history, Coalition leaders have doubled down on climate and energy policies.
According to several shock jocks and some party stalwarts, Wentworth is an aberration, an electorate not truly representative of the rest of the nation.
Like a jilted lover, the attitude is: It’s not me, it’s you.
Climate policy, or the lack thereof, was a regular gripe within the electorate, resonating throughout the campaign…

The good news is the shift to renewables has seen emissions drop almost 14 per cent since the peak in 2009…
Can we lower emissions and power prices too?
The answer is yes. It now costs less to finance, build and run a new renewable energy plant than to build a new coal-fired plant.
Newly installed wind power costs around $60 to $70 a megawatt hour while supercritical coal is estimated to cost $75 an hour.
That’s why our power companies have rejected the idea of keeping open old coal generators or building new ones and instead shifted to solar and wind. It’s why banks won’t finance coal generators.
Those trends are only likely to accelerate. In Western Australia this month, wholesale power prices dropped to zero four times in one week as renewable energy — which has zero marginal cost because there is no fuel — flooded the system.

Local power companies had jacked up prices to compensate for the loss of taxpayer funded coal and gas subsidies which the State Government could no longer afford.
Those soaring power bills, coupled with a dramatic drop in the cost of solar installations, saw households and consumers take to renewable energy in unprecedented numbers, leaving the utilities with reduced demand and higher costs.
It is a classic case of economics and markets at work.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-29/verrender-could-lower-emissions-cut-your-power-bills/10439508

Perhaps you could do the UK a big favour by keeping Dan Hannan in Australia as the ignorant moron is of no use to us on Brexit. He is so stupid that when trying to claim that there is no border between France (EU) and Switzerland (Efta) he didn’t realise that Basel-Mulhouse airport (which he uses to make a £200 profit on the funding of air travel to the Strabourg parliament by not using Strasbourg airport) is actually in France and so there is no border the cross!

Hi Jo
Perhaps be a little cautious with your new friend Dan… there was a time when he was part of a campaign for a double referendum on Brexit…hopefully he has changed his tune…just as damning he was also best mates with a certain Douglas Carswell…Nigel Farage will tell you all about it one day no doubt…